Crime and Ethics

Crime is an issue which poses many different questions relating
to ethics. However, in the modern world, it is not realistic to
suggest that crime is a simple issue. The reasons crime are
committed wildly vary, although the punishment is almost always
the same; imprisonment.

According to recorded crime statistics, the re-offending rate
within the United Kingdom is nearly 75%. This suggests that
within the prison system, something is very not working. If
Prison is meant to reform an individual, then surely it is the
job of the prison system to give every possible opportunity to
these individuals to change their ways, and give them a chance.

While this is largely done, one might also suggest that due to
the psychological nature of many prisoners, the reoffending rate
will be high no matter what steps are taken.

To draw an international comparison, it is a well known statistic
that within the USA, you are more likely to find 17 year old
black male in prison than you are in college. While this is
somewhat shocking, and the reasons for this can be speculated
upon for an almost limitless time, this raises a bigger question
which is, how does society change the situation?

In the last 50 years, internationally, the level of imprisonable
offences has risen dramatically. This effectively means that more
people can be imprisoned for more offences: increasing the load
on the already overworked public services. Each prisoner, to keep
within the cells for a year, can cost a suprising amount of
money.

There are numerous costs associated with modern jails; the food
has to be of a good, balanced standard, lighting and energy bills
are constantly rising, skilled personnel to deal with each
prisoner also have to be employed at great cost. This means that
effectively, some sentences mean a much larger burden to the
regular taxpayer than the risk the criminal on the street would
be to society.

One case in point is that of a California man, jailed in March
2010 for stealing a $5 packet of grated cheese. The sentence
eventually handed down was 8 years. This was because of the
American legal system's "3 strikes" ruling, which means that if 2
previous offences are committed, in some states, you could
theoretically face life imprisonment for something as unimportant
as the stealing of cheese. Infact, there are even cases of men
being imprisoned for 25 years for the theft of a single VHS tape.

Realistically, we can assume that cases like these are a clear
reason for why the reoffending rate is so high. If a man is
imprisoned for 8 years for stealing cheese, he is unlikely to
have any respect for the society that placed him in confinement
in the first place.

This is exactly the kind of imprisonment that is unethical; not
only does the punishment not fit the crime, but the cost to the
taxpayer is horrendous. Each country has a limited budget, and it
would seem more sensible to spend the money spent on keeping
cheese-thiefs in prison on things such as healthcare or
education.

One may blame the prisoner for committing the crime, or one may
blame the system for over inflated sentencing. However, one more
realistic social approach, particularly in the USA, would be the
desire of the public for "justice"; if a crime is committed, the
vast majority of the public want to see the criminals behind bars
without any thought to possible consequences to this, not only on
the psyche of the prisoner, but on the taxpayer's budget on the
whole.